Monday, April 30, 2012

Sunday, April 29, 2012

LADY BRACKNEEL: And what are your politics, Mr. Worthing?
WORTHING: Well, I am afraid, Lady Bracknell, that I really have none. I am a Liberal.

CECILYThen have we got to part?
ALGERNONI am afraid so. It's a very painful parting.
CECILYIt
is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very
brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with
equanimity.

MISS PRISMDo not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
CECILYDid
you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did
not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me
so much.
MISS PRISMThe good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

From Washington to John Quincy, we had the period of the Gentlemen Founders, but Andrew Jackson changed everything. Lincoln was the next transformative administration. Next I'd list Teddy Roosevelt and especially Woodrow Wilson. Then, of course, the massive morph of Federal power under FDR.

In the last 65 years...are we still unfolding the logical outcomes of FDR's country? Too close to say: JFK and Democrats following him certainly are the proximate markers of the Republic's continuing alteration up to the loathsome Barack Hussein Obama.

Although Righties tend to romanticize Ronald Reagan, if you ask yourself where his "revolution" is now...??

My conservative brain tends to focus on the relationship between demographics and government power.

I made a FB comment decrying universal suffrage and lo and behold, another commentor directed me to his FB page, which is full of his proposed Constitutional amendments.

Given the difficulty of amending the Constitution --thank God and the Framing Fathers-- this is usually a passtime for intellectuals and cranks, insofar as these are different categories. It's a narrow literary form requiring discipline. Which I am not in the mood for this morning.

But since I am an intellectual and a crank, I thought I'd just lay out in scattershot style some of the structural and legal changes I'd make if I were --contradictorially-- King of America. Just for an interim period, of course, until I had restored The Republic. And regardless of minor details like opposition, or unintended outcomes. Even reasonably foreseeable outcomes.

For starters and in no particular order:

Universal suffrage would go, for sure. Just as a talking point, I'd try limiting the franchise to male citizens who had done military service and/or were married, with perhaps different levels of voting power for owners and renters. Owners get 2 votes, renters 1.

All the anti-discrimination legislation would go, and all the pro-discrimination laws as well. End any Human Rights Commissions. Forbid the use of the words diversity, sensitivity, inclusion or multiculturalism. Kill the ADA.

Kehoe would be voided.

Term limits for Congress.

End no-fault divorce

End welfare for unwed mothers.

End anchor baby citizenship.

Drive out, by various means, illegal immigrants. Make it easy, for instance, to deport immediately any non-citizen who
could not provide proof of legal presence. The same "due process" you
get when you drive without a license.

Reform the immigration laws to shut down the Third World invasion and make the US prefer immigrants of European extraction.

Beef up 2nd amendment rights and freedom of association rights.

Make English the official language.

Segregate prisons by race (to end the epidemic of black on white prison rape).

Register all Muslims as agents of a foreign hostile power.

Forbid citizens from having or giving their children stupid names.

Differentiate "equality before the law" so that you could legally adapt to the naturally differing conditions of minor children and adults, men and women, citizens and non citizens.

Void Roe v Wade and return that issue to the States.

Alter the 9/11 memorials in NY and Pennsylvania to make it clear that these acts were done by Muslim jihadis in the name of Islam.

Restore Washingtons and Lincolns birthdays. MLK relegated to states.

Make a simple tax code that does not penalize enterprise.

Shred the Federal bureaucracy.

Pretty well void any legislation that Obama signed. And offer him exile in Nigeria, so he could dream of his father.

A FB friend has a homo FB friend who is quite handsome and a complete moron. I have left out the intervening comments, but it doesn't really matter. Behold, without attribution and hence without permission, his brilliance:

You mean rich white straight and
Christian people having their way and controlling society? That would
be something now wouldn't it?...

They just need to realize we live in a
pluralistic democratic republic and that this intrinsically entails a
loosening of their ridiculously rigid tenets of selfishness and
exclusion in the name of God and country. It's a ruse that's
anachronistic and divisive and doesn't serve the greater good.

God is personal. We need to respect
that right. But pushing a myopic notion of God on the masses is not
okay and doesn't belong in politics. Yes I would rather have a free
for all 'utopia' than a cadre of rich shitkicking 'manly men' white
good old boys trying to shove their poison kool-aid down my throat in
the name of 'freedom' any day.

People are a lot more conservative than
those boys give 'em credit for. But they need to get off the bully
pulpit (no pun intended ) because it's a sham.

Our beautiful country was founded by
well-meaning slave owners. 100 years later we counted slaves as 3/5
of a person. And that was a compromise!

(Responding to point that white Christian males were the ones who ended slavery:)

White Christian males were the only
force period. Why should it have taken so long? No you're right. The
aforementioned 'luminaries ' deserve a pat on the back. Go Chris!tian
white guys! Woot woot

And wrong. The left idolizes those that
dare to think outside the box and fight for the greater good. The
right idolizes those that preserve the status quo and their own right
to property.

Stop being reductionist. The left is full of
people who are spiritual, love this country, but who don't want to
see everyone fall through the cracks. Your heroes created this 'open
mouth' mess. Deal with it. It's about time. All that foresight and
interest in the good of humankind. Hogwash!! Nobody wants to take
away your right to call the left 'godless' or to criticize 'the
welfare state'. Its taken a long time for the greed and exclusion of our progenitors to get to the point where it can be criticized
openly but it's about time. We don't need a narrow minded minority
telling us that we're unAmerican because we don't espouse their
notions of God and virtue. It's too late for that. We have to
consider everyone now.

Watching sets of British TV series, both contemporary and historical, reminds me that wymyn, regardless of class or education or race, have absolutely no claim to group moral superiority compared with men. If they have done less damage in history, it is only because they lack the means, not the will. (And they have also done far far less to create civilization and high culture than men...everything from plumbing to Mozart, vastly a male undertaking.)

Reminded me about my psychology program years ago, largely a female class. As individuals, I rather liked many of them. One semester, though, a female prof the girls were fond of had to take a sick leave and another female prof came in to replace here. Perfectly nice and competent woman. But she was a White Southerner with big hair. This group of highly conscious and evolved California feminists decided immediately and en masse, for no discernible reason, to hate her. Just like they synchronized their periods. Their hive mind created all kinds of completely illusory problems with the poor woman. Folie a vingt-deux. It was creepy and very revealing. A living workshop in psychological group projection.

Although I have never lived with women since I left home at 18, I have worked with them often. Some days I seriously wonder if the Nineteenth Amendment was not a huge mistake.

In this case the victim to be dismembered was another female; hardly novel, though.

A funny memory from that otherwise revolting episode of the vigilante Bacchantes was a bitchy crack one of them made about the new prof's big hair: "What's she hiding in there? The Lindbergh baby?"

Friday, April 27, 2012

According to the Blogger stats, Ex Cathedra has just had 200,000 hits since its inception in December 2006. 2800 posts. Sounds like a lot, but given the size of the blogspheric realm, we remain, though infallible, the tiniest of duchies.

When I first started it, I wondered if I'd keep up my interest. Never thought it would become the letting-off-steam addictive distraction that it's turned into.

RUBIN: What are the main reasons you think it is so hard for Western policymakers, journalists, and academics to understand and deal accurately with Islam and political Islamic movements?
SPENCER: I think the main reason is that Islam is a religion.

Only partly true, sir. If a worldwide campaign of terrorism and social pressure had been launched by the Afrikaaners' Dutch Reformed Church, you can bet not a stone would be left unturned in unmasking it. It is the race of Muslims that makes the difference. Islam is a Third World Brown-and-Black Peoples religion and as such, Islam is coded as a non-White race in public discourse, with all the rights to lying license and deference and BS that comes with it.

PS. Speaking of race...or rather, keeping your mouth shut about it...a rise in NYC subway crime of late. Here's some of the text about two suspects.

The suspect is described by police as a man in his early to mid 20s, approximately 6-feet and 175 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with navy blue jogging pants and a black baseball cap.

The suspect is described by police as a man between 30 to 40 years old, approximately 5-5 and 150 pounds with brown eyes, short black hair and a mustache. He was last seen wearing a black and orange sweatshirt.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

In the wake of AG "My People" & "Affirmative Action Has Just Begun" Holder's decision to sue a Florida fire department because not enough Blacks get promoted --they flunk the written test-- I continue my thoughtcrime experiment of how the different racial groups would fare without each other. If his Nation of Cowards broke up and there were several separate post-USA sovereign States based on race (White, Black, Latino, Asian, Amerindian....even a citystate for LGBTs), how would they fare?

It looks like the White Republic would quickly go into civil war mode because, as I said, I think that the primary conflict is between Whites, liberals vs conservatives*. But if we simply stay on the level of basic survival...capacity to create order, have and use skills and resources, set up systems for healthcare, police and fire and military, banking and money systems, even garbage collection, heat and water and light, maintenance of infrastructure and technology, schooling, etc...the new Caucasian state would do just fine. To put it bluntly, the Whites do not need the other groups to survive.

In a Black State, who would handle all that?

Which leads me to my thoughtcrime of the day: as endlessly dissatisfied and resentful as many Blacks seem to be within the current structure, despite a half century of America's dismantling barriers and supporting special treatment, would they actually be better off outside it? Whites could get along without them, but could they get along without us?

You do the math.

*But since liberals are against owning guns and would thus be at a disadvantage, I suspect they'd get a separate State pretty easily, just because the conservatives would be so happy to be rid of them.

I thought I was critical of the egalitarian trance the West is in. Alex Curtagic makes the case that the absolutizing fetish of equality is rankly evil, the moral scourge of modernity.

...egalitarianism has a terrorist history, beginning with the French Revolution, a movement comprising criminals, psychopaths, alcoholics, defectives, and sociopathic geniuses. This may also be because egalitarianism attracts the worst elements of any population, since they are the ones with most to gain by equality policies.

Communism may be dead, but Marx's ghost is alive and well. The West may have won the battle but lost the war. Now that everyone is speaking and thinking in the same language again, we can get back to building the Tower of Babel.

Since I have noticed it, it continues to amaze me how various majorities in the West --men, Whites, heterosexuals, people who can walk upright and speak English-- have now adopted a default psychological attitude of anxiety in relation to various minorities, a debilitating and servile fear of offending them. The grownups living in terror of the teenagers' moods. They have simply been talked into it. And in the space of a single lifetime. An internalization of Burnham's brilliant insight that "the liberal is always morally disarmed in the presence of those he deems less well off than himself." Suicidal indeed.

Whites, White men especially, may have created the modern world as we know it, an unparalleled achievement. But now they are revealed as the most foolish people on earth, selling out their birthright for a deeply potty message.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

From TV series A Dance to the Music of Time, the Between The Wars British upper classes decaying, Time magazine considered this multibook series the 43rd most important novel of the 20th century...I don't know, somehow total obscurity might be a less disappointing accolade.

As one of the principle characters collapses into bed in a drunken stupor, asking for sleeping pills: I dislike waking at four...and thinking things over.Me, too.

Although bad boy stock broker Jonathan Cake brightens things up now and again...

PS. By the end of the series, the suicide of the West is apparent. Lord Widmerpool says it all.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

"The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we
try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all
the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once
had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into
the Law Courts."

Monday, April 23, 2012

And here is where the whole business turns nasty. The souls of men --their ambitious, warlike, protective, possessive character-- must be dismantled in order to liberate women from their domination. Machismo --the polemical description of maleness or spiritedness, which was the central natural passion in men's souls in the psychology of the ancients, the passion of attachment and loyalty-- was the villain, the source of the difference between the sexes. The feminists were only completing the job done by Hobbes in his project of taming the harsh elements in the soul. With machismo discredited, the positive task is to make men caring, sensitive, even nurturing, to fit the restructured family. Thus once again men must be re-educated according to an abstract project. They must accept the "feminine elements" in their nature. A host of Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep types invade the schools, popular psychology, TV and the movies, making the project respectable. Men tend to undergo this re-education somewhat sullenly but studiously, in order to avoid the opprobrium of the sexist label and to keep peace with their wives and girlfriends. And it is indeed possible to soften men. But to make them "care" is another thing and the project must inevitably fail.

From the website of a Catholic parish that hosts a Men Only monthly meeting on a variety of topics. From their post about how the group got started:

During this time the group was open to all and only two women ever came. We prayed and believed this was God's providence. God was showing us that men needed a group that allowed them to come, talk about the issues that mattered most and share in a common bond of brotherhood rooted Catholicism. Modern society has tried to kill true manhood and we hoped this was one way to help restore it. Of course once we said it was for men only a lot of women said, "Hey we want to come!" Sorry gals too late.

In the hyped-up wake of the contemptible Tray-von vs The White Hispanic* soap opera, the conservative and neo-conservative journal National Review fired writer John Derbyshire for printing in another publication his White/Asian version of "The Talk" that Black parents apparently give their kids about how to deal with the realities of race in America. It was blunt, expressed some inconvenient truths and therefore created a panic of self-righteousness. A second writer, of the racial realist school, was dumped soon after.

National Review hosts an annual cruise, a chance to hang out with conservative luminaries and raise money for the magazine.

A pseudonymous wag, himself apparently blacklisted, --oh, sorry, is that racist?--offered an amusing and modest proposal to help the right wingers at NR really establish their anti-racist bona fides. Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg stuck on a boat for a week with a hundred "No Limit Niggas"*...now that would be a hoot.

*This is so sexist. His father is Zimmerman, his mother is Peruvian. So we quash the rich feminine aboriginal lineage in favor of the culturally dominant patriarchal identity. Appalling.

We've all seen pix of Mr Zimmerman. Suppose I, a purely Northern European guy, had attacked Mr. Zimmerman. Do you doubt for one nanosecond that I'd be the racist, attacking a Latino? When it comes to the race game, Americans are insane.

On my last day in NYC, I thought I'd check out the Met to see if any exhibits were of interest. They have one on the transition from the Byzantine empire to the empire of Islam. Paragraph one outlines the extent and style of the Eastern Roman Empire. Paragraph two:

In the same (7th) century, the newly established faith of Islam emerged from Mecca and Medina along the Red Sea trade route and reached westward into the empire's southern provinces. Political and religious authority was transferred from the long established Christian Byzantine Empire to the newly established Umayyad and later Abbasid Muslim dynasties.

See? Wasn't that nice? It "emerged" and "reached westward" and "political and religious authority was transferred" as if by magic. How did that "newly established faith" manage this? Pamphlets? Barefoot wandering monks? Soup kitchens? Since it followed "the Red Sea trade route", should we imagine it came via missionary merchants?

No mention of century-long military invasion, imperialist conquest and colonial submission. To say nothing of armies marching in France and a 1000 year plus history of piracy and raiding and attempts at further conquest.

On FB, a Sister of Charity who is also my cousin, and a wonderful person, has posted the equivalent of a bumper sticker, responding to the recent Vatican decision to reform the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella org for most orders of greying US nuns. It reads: My conscience tells me to stand with the Catholic Sisters.

Well, that is really the question: are the Sisters still Catholic? At their 2007 meeting, even their keynote speaker admitted that some of their member congregations had quietly "moved beyond" Christianity while remaining Catholic on paper.

If you were a space alien and wanted to know about this big 1 billion member 2000 year old religion and decided to check out the websites of the orders of Catholic sisters which belong to LCWR to find out, you'd get a seriously deranged picture. It's not only what they emphasize, but what they are resoundly silent about. An odd version of Wittgenstein's dictum: Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.

Although Ex Cathedra does not practice his ancestral faith, he knows what it is; it was partly out of respect for the reality of what Catholicism is rather than what I wanted it to be. Like his general reaction to the liberal Regime of Lies, it is not really about hypocrisy or heresy, but about being insulted: asked to buy what is patently a ten-minutes-old bill of goods as if it were the real thing. So when its representatives want to use the cover and prestige of their Church belonging to foster ecofeminism and lefty liberation-theology social justice statism, etc. he is not a fan.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Funny how liberal Catholics want to make immemorial teachings like the all-male priesthood die the death of a thousand qualifications but treat the ten-minutes old Catholic social teaching as if it is manna from heaven. About that they are functionally fundamentalist: literal and unquestioning.

And although they are very big on the "social justice" parts --aka government structures that transfer wealth-- they are almost universally silent on abortion. And you never hear them addressing problems that create poverty --like having kids without being married--- unless the solution means more government money for after-the-fact institutions and programs.

The number one reason that Blacks are such a mess is that they have detonated their family structure. If you could put that back together, both they and the rest of the country would significantly improve. And about that, from these types, you heard nada.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

“A problem cannot be solved within the same
consciousness that created it.” –Albert Einstein

Thirty-five LCWR members and justice and peace
coordinators gathered at Bethany Center near
Tampa from March 5 to 8 to explore “Consciousness
and Campaigns: Spirituality and Politics beyond
Dualism.”

In a society and church increasingly characterized
by polarization and misunderstanding, how can
people of good will find common ground? Where can
people of faith find communion?

Dr Trelawny, Divination Professor at Hogwarts

With the guidance of executive director of NETWORK,
Simone Campbell, SSS, and composer and retreat directorJan Novotka, the group journeyed from contemplative
silence and meditative song, to analysis of systems
that divide, to an awakening to the essential unity of all.

Sleeeeepy...you are getting veeeeery sleeeeeepy...

Saving the best for last...

Participants were challenged to dive deep into the mystical
unitive consciousness and to cross the false boundaries
and categories which divide and limit efforts to
effect systemic change.

Friday, April 20, 2012

As readers of Ex Cathedra know, even though he has been without TV since December and does not read the papers, the Net is enough to provoke him to his (admittedly brilliant) rantings.

Visiting the parental home for several days, it has been a shock to run into talk radio all day and TV news all evening. Talking (and shouting) heads. I retire to my room early just to get away from it, even when I agree with it.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

One of the many striking things that Allan Bloom wrote in The Closing of the American Mind was that in the Sixties, it suddenly became an unquestioned article of faith among the Enlightened Ones that both universal brotherhood and complete personal satisfaction could be achieved, simultaneously and without any conflict. If we all get to do our own thing, then peace on earth will arrive.

When you think about it, it's insane.

On this planet, pretty well everything costs something and everything has a downside for someone. Nothing will make everyone happy. Promises of all-inclusive happiness simply hide the costs of the benefits.

Several incidents of late brought home to me the continuing Regime of Lies that characterizes the current social contract. We are all supposed to assume universal human equality and harmony and respect, even when we a. tolerate the very kind of behavior from Sacred Victim Groups that we would righteously quash among our own and b. contemptuously dismiss any viewpoint in our diverse paradise that does not match the Official Viewpoints and Attitudes required of the diverse members of the aforesaid inclusive (and sensitive) paradise.

It bothers me not because it is hypocritical. Mere hypocrisy is trivial. It's an easy brush to tar with. (Oops. Is that raciss?) And it's moralistic. The Regime of Lies bothers me because it insults my intelligence and wastes my time.

So I am here to give a moderate moment of applause to two groups not normally on Ex Cathedra's list of Greatest Hits: Islam and White Nationalism.

These groups get mild kudos from me because they are clear and unapologetic about who should be in charge and what should be the lot of those who are not. Compared to the pussified venom and anocranial antics of Orwellian progressives, it is a kind of a relief to read about people who believe that they are meant to rule and have no interest in whether that bothers you or hurts your little feelings. In fact, if it does, they rather like that.

Islam is abundantly clear that it is the final and perfect religion for all mankind. There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet is not a question. Or an opinion. It is an absolute creedal assertion. So when the Muslim Horde of Peace arrives in your town, sword in hand, to do you the great favor of inviting you to The Original and Last True Religion, you have a choice: convert or face the consequences.

If you decline and you are a polytheist --the ultimate filth in Muslim eyes-- your life is forfeit. If you decline and you are an errant monotheist of a revealed Book, you can be tolerated as a distinctly second class resident of the New World, as long as you agree and show proper submission. No fun for the Jewish and Christian dhimmis, as they are called, the "protected" unbelievers, but perfectly consistent with the self-understanding of Islam. No apologies offered. Take it or leave it. In some places and periods, life for the dhimmis was not endless misery. But no matter how well they might be treated, it was always clear as a bell --or the muezzin's voice-- who was in charge and on what grounds and on whose terms tolerance was extended. No insulting intelligence. No wasting time.

White Nationalism is a much more recent and unsettled phenomenon, although you can make a case that, prior to the mid-20th century, it was the de facto social and political regime. As a surprising example, Abraham Lincoln's views on Blacks, despite his opposition to slavery as an institution, make it hard to distinguish him from current partisans of a White supremacist politics. Although the internal world of WN politics is, unsurprisingly, fractured and fractious, and worse, it is refreshingly clear even when shockingly blunt. At its most polite end, it expresses a clear and unambiguous preference and advocacy for the White race apart from and above any other. At its other end, it is very willing to translate that preference into a strategy of Any Means Necessary, so that the elimination of its enemies is promoted without ambiguity or hand-wringing. Again, the point is clear: no insulting your intelligence or wasting your time.

Both of these groups are, to put it mildly, unfriendly to man-loving fellas like me. It is a measure of my irritation with the slobberingly pro-gay denizens of the Regime of Lies that I am driven, just for the pleasure of a moment's clarity, to offer them faint praise.

Focus in reports will be on their thundering silence of abortion and homosexuality, which the report mentions. But the heart of the whole thing will get lost, which is that Rome has discovered that as far as this group is concerned, Christ is either a cipher or an afterthought. As the document says,

the Assessment reveals serious doctrinal problems which affect many in
Consecrated Life. On the doctrinal level, this crisis is characterized by a diminution of the
fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration which leads, in turn, to a loss of a “constant and lively sense of the Church” among some Religious.

The Church, on most of their websites, is either The People of God or a sinful patriarchal institution which needs the reforming benefit of the sisters' "prophetic" critique, based on "the signs of the times." And the Mass, because it requires a male priest, is something of a disputed question, or an optional form of devotion. The organization will now have the benefit of three bishops to oversee their "renewal".

A lot of these women really are ecofeminist Democrats who have a lot more in common with Unitarian Universalists and Episcopalians --save for the ethnic thing. with the old Catholic or Christian shell just there for convenience and sentiment.

PS A lot of commentors accuse Rome and the bishops of hypocrisy because of their catastrophic handling of the clergy sex abuse mess. No doubt they failed bigtime there and gave the Church's enemies a freebie that keeps on giving. But what a lot of people don't understand is that, despite its big moral code, Catholicism --if I may speak of it as a mythic organism-- cares a lot more about doctrine and sacraments than about human bad behavior. Bad behavior is a constant. But perhaps precisely because of this, Catholic identity --same for the Orthodox-- is rooted in dogma and in sacraments, which means the centrality of a doctrinally and sacrally empowered priesthood. The Church authorities will always take this more seriously than bad behavior. If you don't accept that, then sooner or later you'll be a Protestant, either overtly or covertly. All that blather about The People of God --which usually sounds like Thirty of the Good Folks Of St. Finbar's Parish-- is public relations.

I admit it, I used to find Kirk Cameron kinda hot. For a long time now he has been a very orthodox Evangelical, active in the media wing of that religious world.

He winds up on an interview show with Empty Suit Piers Morgan, one of our journalistic betters, --and British to boot, so very sophisticated and all. Cameron's in a film that asserts America's downfall if it does not turn to God. Hardly original.

Talking about the film with CNN's Piers Morgan, Cameron gave his unvarnished opinion when asked about homosexuality.
It's "unnatural," he said on the April 2 show. "I think that it's --
it's detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the
foundations of civilization."

The response drew rebukes from gay rights organizations, and ridicule from several Hollywood stars, including an off-color video from a group of fellow former child actors.

As Morgan later summed up the backlash, many people were "shocked by
the fact of this sweet nice boy from 'Growing Pains' has come out with
what he clearly felt were perfectly normal comments but actually in the
cold light of day are transparently offensive."

"I just don't think you can sit there with a straight face and say 'I'm
a Christian, God-fearing, all-around good person, but by the way, I
hate these people who were born the way they were.'"

Mr. Piers is now also a theologian, evidently. And of course "Hollywood stars", "former child actors" and "gay rights organizations" certainly have the bead on the moral compass well in hand...

What is totally lacking, of course, is anyone engaging Cameron's point of view. All they do is dump. Now if we had a movie about some early Protestant hero, or a victim of the Inquisition, and the authorities were all yelling "Heresy! Heresy!", we could all sit back and see how pathetically unable they were to actually face the issues involved.

But now we are so sophisticated that when an orthodox Evangelical states a completely unsurprising orthodox Evangelical point of view, Our Moral and Intellectual Role Models have the combined equivalent of a Victorian fainting spell and a schoolyard gang-up.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Over at Andrew Klavan, Andrew Klavan is trying to be a nice guy, a Good Conservative. It's about race and who's a racist, etc. Zzzzzzz.

The whole discussion is doomed from the start. Because as long as we accept the terms, literally, the terms "racist" and "not racist", we get nowhere. Not that there's anywhere to go in any case.

As long as that Sword of Damocles (pardon the White EuroCentric reference) hangs over the issue, it's just ping pong. Which is Cantonese for BS.
It's as useless as homophobe, Islamophobe, sexist, xenophobe, antiSemite, etc. etc. It only means Whose Side Are You On?

And it's based on the fraudulent assumption that all Blacks (unless Republicans) are victims of White Racism and therefore have absolute moral capital as judges of who and who is not OK. If Mitt Romney, rather than Jesse Jackson, had said he was nervous around groups of young Black men, we'd be hearing about it still and he'd be replaying Henry IV at Canossa.

Because in every case, someone is waiting to play the judge as to whether, based on your beliefs (or even your facts...especially your facts), your attitudes or your behavior, you are The Worst Kind of Bad Person or Okay For Now As Long As You Feel Bad. One of Us or one of Them.

I have no problem with Us or Them. But it's the gameplaying about it that irks me.

I cyber-stumbled onto an excerpt from a novel about an attempt to wrest control of the Northwest US from America and make it into a White homeland. An index of technical terms included "stukach", informer, from the Russian period under Stalin. It is considered so insulting as to be a legal "killing word", one which could legally lead to a duel to the death. The two other such words in the new country's law code are "wigger" and...."attorney".

Saturday dinner with Bro #3, wife and child: Pulled pork, shoulder dryrubbed and slow smoked for six hours in his big backyard barbecue, with rice and beans, guacamole, salad and chianti.

Sunday dinner out with Bro #1 and wife: Shared grilled calamari with lemon, meatballs of prosciutto and mortadella in tomato sauce, then gnocchi with fennel sausage and mushrooms, a Ligurian white, blood-orange sorbet and coffee.

When I asked the waitress for Pinot Grigio, she said they didn't have any. When I said, No Pinot Grigio in an Italian restaurant? she replied curtly, It's because we're an Italian restaurant that we don't have Pinot Grigio...That would surprise the folks in Friuli and Veneto. Clearly the girl was periodic or something. But I enjoyed the meal so much I forgot to cut her tip in half. I really need to bone up on my vindictiveness.

On the way home, at Spring and Lafayette, I missed by inches being run down in the one way street by a speeding cyclist going the wrong way. Close call.

Though I am just a few subway stops away from the 9/11 site, which I visited shortly after the Muslims blew it up in 2001, I will not go to the memorial. No need to have a stroke.

Everything I know about it, and its equally revolting sister-memorial in Pennsylvania, indicates that it memorializes what is wrong with our dickless culture. One thing it certainly avoids is any connection between Islam and September 11 2001. Honoring the dead by refusing to name who killed them all. That might hurt someone's feelings.

A positive review in the Lifestyle section of WaPo --again, never once mentioning Muslims and Islam-- spends its time looking forward to a day when the dynamics of this "memorial" will facilitate forgetting what it meant.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Since it's so bright and warm, took a stroll on the High Line, the urban promenade park recently created out of 20 blocks of elevated railroad tracks along 10th Avenue. It was full of people walking along the length of the park, with its unusual views of Manhattan and the Hudson River.

Amazingly, for a city borough with a White population at about half, and the neighborhoods around the Line heavily Latino, the folks on the High Line were almost 95% White.

Some of the "public art" along the way was definitely White. I had to alter the photo below for legibility, but this is actually 40 feet high on a side of a building right at a turn in the Line.

Really. Who else would make this kind of stuff? :)

Asians were the next noticeable group, including a lot of Indians, maybe 4.5% . Moving from one end to the other, I don't think I saw more than two dozen Blacks, and at least half of them were with Whites. English far outstripped all the other languages I heard along the way, with French and Hindi and Chinese the occasional other ones. Not a single word of Spanish in well over an hour.

Friday, April 13, 2012

I wandered into Starbucks today and found myself staring at a wooden wall poster full of ethics, virtue and goodness, based on stuff like this. I almost walked out.

Now businesses like this, to please the liberal egos of their latte-lapping customer base, must play the Benneton and Whole Foods game and sell you righteousness with your morning brew. You'd think they were Global NGO's just selling coffee to underwrite their good works.

PS. A thought about the structure of liberal moralism, a kind of narcissism (self obsession plus a core of self hatred) in which ethical status is show by self-criticism, when the self is the group, and a show of selflessness by concentrating on object of concern that are distant from oneself or one's group, the more distant the better. And if they hate you, even better than that. When it comes to animals and The Earth, one even moves beyond one's species...And it's covered under an ever widening Circle of Concern.

In contrast, modern liberals’ defining trait is making a public
spectacle of how their loyalties leapfrog over some unworthy folks
relatively close to them in favor of other people they barely know (or
in the case of profoundly liberal sci-fi movies such as Avatar, other 10-foot-tall blue space creatures they barely know).

This urge toward leapfrogging loyalties has less to do with sympathy
for the poor underdog (white liberals’ traditional favorites, such as
soccer and the federal government, are hardly underdogs) as it is a
desire to get one up in status on people they know and don’t like.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Acting with the dignity and restraint we expect from the President of the Republic, Barry Hussein O reiterated his opinion that Kanye West is a jackass. True enough, but he thought that by mentioning that he's "A Chicago guy. Smart. Talented", he would do more than oxymoronize.

Mr West, an African American hiphop artist and one of the One Percent, who is worth $90 million, is crying, as my grandmother used to say, all the way to the bank.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

H.L. Mencken, the bad boy of Baltimore journalism
in the Roaring Twenties, once suggested, tongue firmly in cheek, that
all failed candidates for president should be quietly hanged, so that
their further maunderings would not upset the young. One can only
imagine what Mencken (who used to deride the sanctimonious President
Wilson as “the Archangel Woodrow”) would say about condign punishment
for Jimmy Carter. In any case, Mr. Carter would do us all a great favor
if he would lay off theology and exegesis. Like foreign policy, these
are disciplines manifestly beyond his capabilities..

From Ibn Ishaq's biography of Mohammad, the earliest account of his life.

The apostle said, “Kill any Jew that fails
into your power.” Thereupon Muhayyisa b. Mas’ud leapt upon Ibn Sunayna, a
Jewish merchant with whom they had social and business relations, and
killed him. Huwayyisa was not a Muslim at the time though he was the
elder brother. When Muhayyisa killed him Huwayyisa began to beat him,
saying, “You enemy of God, did you kill him when much of the fat on your
belly comes from his wealth?” Muhayyisa answered, “Had the one who
ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you I would have cut your head
off.” He said that this was the beginning of Huwayyisa’s acceptance of
Islam. The other replied, “By God, if Muhammad had ordered you to kill
me would you have killed me?” He said, “Yes, by God, had he ordered me
to cut off your head I would have done so.” He exclaimed, “By God, a
religion which can bring you to this is marvelous!” and he became a
Muslim.

Going thru Jack Donovan's book on men again, that theme jumped out at me. He also notes that the current social system is based on a pleasant denial of human nature.

Reminds me of how entrenched is the liberal notion that people really are the way we want them to be. No amount of evidence can shake that faith. Indeed, the endless problem-solving social engineering project which is liberalism is based on that doctrine. Lists of all the ways in which it is not the case merely become more urgent, even frantic, reasons for more programs to make it be true and propaganda to convince us of it.

B sometimes remarks on people who agree with him on politics, for instance, but whose personality, attitudes or lack of brains about it makes him regret that they share common ground. "He agrees with me and I still wish he would shut up."

A commentor at a site I visit, self-named as "RightWingHippieChick" makes me feel the same way. If her recent remarks are any indication, she may have changed her political orientation, but she is as fatuous, naive, pollyanna and just plain dumb as any Hippie Chick you've ever met. As part of a discussion about race and IQ, one of her several brilliant contributions was to hope that if we could talk "openly and honestly" about it, maybe a drug could be developed (Hippie Chick indeed) that would make all of us smarter!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The Judaism that we know, and have known for the last 2000 years, is one particular form of that religion, the one that outlasted all the others. It is not the Judaism of the priesthood but the Judaism of the Rabbis. In the competition between the priests and the Pharisees, the Pharisees won.

Although its roots go back before the destruction of the Temple --and its mythology sends it back to Moses, of course-- the rabbis' transformation of the Mosaic religion of the preceding 1000 years was both massive and brilliant. It moved the Jews from being the people of the Temple and the Land to being the people of the Books. Plural. The Torah, the Prophets, the Writings...and the post-scriptural but crucial Talmud, the multivolumed record of rabbis arguing.

From the tracts of the Talmud

One of the slogans of the early rabbis --in the 200's or so AD-- was this: Build a fence around the Torah. This meant that a whole field of oral law was created, law not written in the Five Books of Moses. Its role was partly to prevent Jews from even getting close to transgressing any of the original written commandments.

For instance, the Torah forbids cooking a kid-goat in its mother's milk; the oral law, the fence, forbade eating any kind of meat with milk at all so the eventually two separate sets of dishes and utensils were created.. Also, since writing was considered work that broke the Sabbath, it was forbidden on that day even to touch a pen. And so it goes. As you move farther from the center, so to speak, the rules and behaviors can look strange and unconnected, but there is a logic to it all.

Although the Catholic Church has not consciously adopted this slogan, of course --one more adapted to a religion of holy law like Judaism (or Islam, with its Sharia) than a doctrinal/sacramental one-- I wonder if the same impulse has contributed to the creation of the Catholic sexual ethic (which, once upon a time, would not have been seen as unusual as it is now). On a conscious level, it is a combination of scriptural teaching, Old and New Testaments, and a commitment to the natural law. (I wouldn't be surprised if centuries of monastic introspection had some influence as well.)

Manual of Moral Theology

But the detailed attention given to varieties of sexual thoughts and acts makes more sense if it is seen as a kind of unconsciously Talmudic fence built around the sacrament of Matrimony, which reveals the natures of males and females and creates the family. Anything sexual that even remotely detracts from or threatens that will be ruled out of court, with a vehemence sometimes hard to understand*.

Hence we had the moral tradition of de sexto nulla materia parva: Concerning the sixth (commandment), no matter is small. Or "when it comes to sex, there's no such thing as a minor issue." Condemnation not only of things like solitary masturbation, but even thoughts about sex, makes more sense in this light. If the underlying anxiety is about the centrality and strength of marriage, then even if the particulars of the ethic seem individually obsessive, --as orthodox Jewish rules appear to be, about dishes and pens-- it might reveal what all the fuss is really about: building a fence around the sacrament.

PS. If you're not bored already. There used to be something called the Six Commandment of the Church. Everyone learned them in Catechism in my day. They required Catholics to attend Mass on Sundays and holydays, keep the days of fast and abstinence, confess yearly, receive Communion at least once during Eastertime, contribute financially to the Church, and keep the marriage laws. Breaking these was sinful, often mortally so. People found it odd that murder, adultery, missing Mass and eating meat on Friday were all grave offenses. Again, if you look at the Six as a whole, they describe a practicing Catholic. It was building a fence of concrete Catholic identity through clear practice and mostly ritual behavior to clarify who was in and who was out. Making it a matter of sin meant that it was serious. And being Catholic used to be serious.

*It is well known that Catholicism considers homosexual activity "intrinsically and gravely disordered" but not so well known that the Catechism (2352) uses exactly the same language to describe masturbation.

Lee Harris, whose work I have enjoyed, seems to be back to writing again. His piece on whether Iran is a "rational actor" is exemplary. People assume that if a group is a "rational actor" then they are like "us" and can be easily dealt with. Way too simple. Rational actors can be as dangerous as irrational ones.

Reminds me of the knee-jerk criticism that when you are hard on a particular group you are guilty of "dehumanizing" them. Well, when conflicts reach a certain pitch, a lot of that happens, and necessarily so, if you want to survive. Cause you can bet that they're gonna dehumanize you. But the groups I dislike, no matter what I call them, are dangerous to me and what I value precisely because they are human. The feral gang, for example. Or one of Obama's sons. If they were Orcs, they'd be less dangerous.

Watched a mid-80's PD James mystery last night. The lead detective wore a three-piece corduroy suit in earthtones. I had one just like it. Except for the color, I still like the look.

Referring to an earlier post, I was wondering where in the blogosphere or public life do most of the speech codes and intellectual taboos lie. Every group has them, but it seems to me that it is in the domains ruled by the progressive, enlightened, open-minded and forward-looking that you have by far the largest energy for generating Shut Up-ness. The descendants of the Berkeley Free Speech movement created university Speech Codes. Big Brother in bell bottoms. Funny how that happens.

Still enjoying a line from Samuel Huntington about the political change brought about by the Sixties Generation: the arrogance of power was replaced by the arrogance of morality.

An amusing switching of places between troglodyte Catholicism of yesteryear and the splendid ethics of the Secular HighMinded: "error has no rights." Aquinas compared the punishment of heretics with the punishment of counterfeiters: if the State protects its economy by force and coercion against producers of false money, how much more the immortal souls of believers against the producers of false religion? In our day, the issues have changed and the inquisitors wear different clothes, but the mindset continues.

I was waiting for a friend at a local cafe yesterday afternoon. Unlike today, it was bright and temperate. Though I tried to distract myself in the meanwhile by reading on my smart phone about Israel's problems with Iran (scary stuff), I could not help but overhear the conversations around me for a half hour. I know it's judgmental, but inane is the word. (And these were straight people, by the way, mixed male and female.) I humbly hope that when my friend arrived, our gabbing was not quite as inane. I used to have a theory that since God is omnipresent and can, indeed must by definition "hear" not only all the conversations the human race has ever had, but all the thoughts in our billions of heads, to say nothing of all the prayers, that He was long ago driven mad.

I take Blogger for granted. Even grouse now and then about some of its features. But really, it's amazing. And totally free.

One of my reactive traits comes into play when someone says You Can't Say That or You Can't Think That or You Shouldn't Feel That.

I don't know why, but for as long as I can remember, and had the words, my internal reaction is, Fuck You. Perhaps it's just my Five-ish share of my mother Eve's transgressive instinct. When you tell a human being that you can eat from any tree in the whole garden except for that one, that one becomes the only interesting tree in the garden. Everyone knows that. (God knew that, of course, which is why the Avoid The Tree of Knowledge thing was bait for a set-up. But I digress.)

And then, after my FU riposte, I become curious. Curious about why that word, thought or feeling is so unsettling to the person or persons who are kindly telling me to shut up.

These same people are also likely to want to steer me in a direction of their choosing. One they may even believe is simple a matter of seeing what's there. But the combo of Look Here, Not There and Say This and Never Say That only produces in me a kind of rebellion. I'm free, White and 21, so I'll look where I want.

The Tray-von/Zimmerman show and the Derbyshire Deluge encapsulate a lot of it. The MSM and the Obama "He Looks Like My Son"* regime want us to focus all our energy and attention on a single killing, one which they figured would fit The Grand Narrative of White Racism and Black Suffering. Then, oops, slight script change, Senor Zimmerman had to be made "a White Hispanic". (By the same logic, Obama is a White African). And cute little Tray turned out to be something of a wannabe thug. But the Race Juggernaut rolls on. Look here, not there.

The background to this single encounter lies in Derbyshire's Talk To My Children. As he said in an interview today, he believed all the optimistic social engineering of the 60's, but a half century later, the failure is all around us, plain as day, but strictly forbidden to notice. He wants his kids to face reality. Parts of it ain't pretty. And because it threatens The Grand Narrative, he and it must be silenced. Lay the sins on the scapegoat and drive him out into the desert.

The facts are that certain racial and ethnic groups have manifest and empirical strengths of genetics and culture which make them, as a group, consistently better performers than others. I am thinking here of East Asians and Jews. Combine very high average IQs, strong families, and cultures which reward delayed gratification, learning and competitive accomplishment in high-income fields and it's no surprise that, as groups, they have higher measures of success than (for Asians) Whites or (for Jews) other Whites.

No one is going to deny this outright, even if it makes them uncomfortable. Even "positive stereotypes"** are dangerous, they say, because they inspire envy and the resentment of invidious comparisons. Or suddenly, in a breathtaking pirouette away from group-based obsessions like privilege, reparations, level playing fields, legacies of this and that, disparate impact and affirmative action, Only Individuals Count. But because they can smell where the argument is going, many people of a certain type will really be itching for the Shut Up button. There is an implication that groups are not equal. And this violates the Prime Directive of contemporary progressive, enlightened and forward-thinking post-racial society.

The real manure hits the cooling device when you look at Blacks as a group. Need I say more?

Well, of course not, Ex C. Just shut up.

**I recall sitting in a meeting during my gay community nonprofit days and having to listen politely to some Chinese guy whine about Asians being tagged as "the model minority" because they approximated White Middle Class values. All the others, mostly White, nodded sympathetically and knowingly. It may have been at that moment that I thought, "I am so over this shit."

Monday, April 09, 2012

The title of Auden's 1947 poem is of wide application. Anxiety is a constant in human life, being a variant of fear. And fear, anger, sorrow and joy are the Big Four.

One of the reasons I feel that America, and the West, is unravelling is because the values that shape our public culture, the liberal values to which one must bend the knee as the price of admission into polite society, are founded on anxiety. Which is a clinical word for fear.

The current Tray-von Passion Play, and the eruption of moral outrage over John Derbyshire, point up the seismic flaw in what this country has come to be. The historically and (for a few more decades, anyway) demographically dominant, central and utterly irreplaceable group is now entirely in psychological bondage to a terror of offending the minorities.

Think about it. It's stunning.

You may find this analogy insulting, but it seems little different to me from parents living in fear of upsetting their children. And if a child declares him or herself upset with one of the parents, regardless of the reason, the other one sides with the child and attacks the partner.

And the full scenario comes into play merely by words, words alone. You may not lift a finger to actually do harm or damage; all you have to do is say the wrong thing (or sometimes, not say the expected thing in the right way) and retribution is at hand. Even, or especially, if what you say is true.Hurt feelings, sensibilities or just pride trump all.

And given the incredible transformation that has come from 24/7 global mass media, the Internet above all, "public culture" has effectively moved vast areas of our formerly private lives into a virtual public arena. Arena being the operative word, a zone of combat.

Any group of humans whatsoever,
regardless of how apparently different,
can live together peacefully.

The assumption is that they must all subscribe to universal (aka liberal) values and support a set of legal, social and economic institutions designed to promote justice and equality.

If groups of humans do not comply with this dogma and tensions and grievances develop between groups, then it must be the faulty attitudes or institutions of parts of these diverse groups, not the natural and unavoidable outcome of placing incompatible groups in close proximity.

Does anyone actually believe this? But for multiculturalism to make sense, they'd have to.

I remember back in the 80's and early 90's being very unimpressed with the sisters of Mother Theresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity, for their taking up AIDS work. When gay men were rejecting the Church's assessment of their sexuality and asserting themselves, they were to be condemned. But when they were sick and dying, these little sari-clad women would come and take care of them. It felt like a case of moral oneupsnunship, preferring you when you are weak to when you are strong.

I just made a hitherto unmade connection between these nuns and the lesbians in the AIDS organizations I worked in back in Toronto. Most of them really disliked men. We were the agents of The Patriarchy. Gay men, being somewhat at odds with The Patriarchy on erotic grounds, were slightly less obnoxious to them. But only slightly. Yet they wound up taking care of gay guys with AIDS. The similarity between them and the nuns just passed through my head.

PS. While googling for fotos, I found this site. If you want to laugh and get dizzy at the same time, enjoy.

In reading the mainstream responses to Derbyshire's article, I have not found anyone who decided to dial back the outrage and deal with the content. It's all about screeds and rants and shock and outrage and insensitivity and offense. Waves of adjectives, all ramping up the Ultimate Sin: racist. Were I in therapy with the mainstream, I'd say he hit a nerve, right in the middle of the autonomic system.

But it reminded me that whenever a liberal, be it someone I just met or someone who knew me when, has discovered my political views, I am never asked a curious question about why I think that way or why I changed my mind. There is always some ad hominem reaction to me or my background or my mental health, --ranging from pitying to contemptuous--but never, "Really? What makes you think that way?"

Not much difference, really. I have never known a human group that did not subdivide into smaller groups, related to each other by tension. And I lived in monasteries for twenty years. The Founding Fathers usually had their feet on the ground, but when they hoped for a system of government without parties, it was naive. It's what humans do, dividing into groups, staking out turf, suspecting the others.

The pastel dream of universal (or even local) harmony has about as much chance as making lions give up their attachment to pride territory and gender role. It may not be pretty, but evidently it fits the species for survival. And if Jack Donovan is right, for men it is practically constitutive of masculinity.

Tribes, gangs and parties --and nations and empires-- are inevitable, but how they relate to each other varies enormously. I have the limited experience only one lifetime, even with a reasonable knowledge of history, but it seems to me that since the mid 60's, America has been generally moving from vigorous inter-group competition and conflict (normal) to an undeclared chronic civil war. After a certain point, there is no discussion or debate, just polemic and demonization.

I do not make this statement from some high promontory above the fray. My blog is precisely for ranting, for polemic and demonization. By the time I started it in 2006, it already seemed clear to me that there were inimical tribes in play, as dogmatically identified as any religion, and that my tiny spot in the blogosphere was not for some illusory "dialogue" --generally a waste of time: few ever really changes their tribal mind-- for but blowing off steam. Like most converts, I am highly adept at seeing the flaws in the position I left behind.

Partly out of upbringing and circumstance, partly out of character, I naturally make a big distinction between individuals and their groups. Otherwise, I'd have no friends, and a much smaller family.

And now that Lent is over, I can celebrate the Easter season by reading articles which I know will give me a stroke! :)

Two men I admire, Andrew Klavan and Victor Davis Hanson, take up similar themes today, from the Right of Center point of view: There is one set of rules for My Tribe, another for You People. Andrew is light-hearted and amusing, as he often is, a kind of conservative Columbo. VDH is ponderously detailed but the dude don't miss a trick.

Following on the Tray-von soap opera, John Derbyshire --now formerly of National Review*-- wrote a very blunt and unpleasant piece about Black America, most of which most of White America knows but will not say in public. Howls for his head on a plate not only from Afro types like The Atlantic's** "Ta-Nehisi" Coates, but good White liberals and conservatives. Incidents like this, increasingly common, make his "screed" seem like common sense under the Regime of Lies.

But the lalalalalal-close-my-ears-I-cant-hear-you reactions ("such ideas are not worthy of a part in the national discussion") are disheartening. Minogue's point about the kind of panic that grips liberals who can smell an argument they will lose...One of the commentors in the fray loudly and proudly asserts that there is no link whatever between race and IQ. That Red Queen believes far more than six impossible things before breakfast. He probably thinks men and women are interchangeable and that Romanians are just as smart as Jews. And I bet he's someone who holds creationists in contempt for believing that God put the dinosaurs there as a test. Me, I can't see the diff.

Every society has taboos. And you pay the price for breaking them. I cannot believe Derbyshire was innocent of this. But the liberal regime specializes in a particular form of lying about what is perhaps its premier moral issue, race. Just as Obama types can be socialists not by direct confiscation but by Lilliputian regulation, so the media can be propagandists and inquisitors, by instructing us in what we all must know and care about (the tragic death of poor little Tray-von) and punishing those heretics, like Derbyshire, who tell us what we must not.

PS. A more bracing response can be found here, as Jack Donovan replies to all the folks horrified and offended by what Derbyshire wrote. This, my friends, is prose. Were you to feed it to the "I Write Like" analyzer, it would not be HP Lovecraft.

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Unlike my usual and restrained self, I got into a silly comment-fest about "Ta-Nehisi" Coates' name. He's a writer who called for John Derbyshire to be fired as a raciss. (Which he was.) Zzzzz. Another commentor of African extraction named Funke made elitist and classist comments about my FB avatar's clothing. Jack Donovan defended me. It was epic.

Truth is, I have long been both amused and disimpressed with fantastical Black names. Invoking my utterly Eurocentric and class privilege, I tend to assume that people without real names are not real people, having the cheap fake-gold jewelry knockoff version of onomastics. Sue me. (If this were Europe, someone actually could.)

Silly White Boomer names also make me roll my eyes, but that seems to me just shallow class faddishness, not some morally sacrosanct attempt to overcome historical adversity through hyper-naming. (Although there is silly Facebook White liberal who call himself Michael Equality Smith or something...) You can call it The Kwaanzaa Effect: pseudo-African pretense.

One of my illiberal non-libertarian impulses is to make a law that Americans have to have a Western first name. Your family name is your family name and none of my business. But please don't expect me to call you Kwame or Laquishanonda (or Cinnamon or Apple for that matter) without an internal giggle.

I have come up with two thought experiments, based on the reality of racial groups. Not about how we're told we should (or must) think of racial groups, nor based on individual exceptions to their larger patterns. These experiments seem to me to provide a sense of reality about race that our Liberal masters do not want us to have.

To paraphrase infamous Jewish NeoCon Dragonlady Midge Decter's nostrum on gays and apply it to the races: to really know them, you have to know them as a group.

Basic sociology, no? True of all groups. (Including Ms. Decter's.)

So what follow is all about groups, how they mostly are, most of the time and how, as groups, they impact the world around them. Exceptions are just that: exceptions.

EXPERIMENT #1:
RACIAL TAKE-AWAY

The first thought experiment is to take the following groups, one by one, and remove them from the country, imaginatively, and then ask how that would affect the rest, pro and con.

US Census Info 2010

The most interesting one to me, it turns out, is to remove all the Whites from America and have a totally POC (people of color) nation of Latinos, Blacks, Indians and Asians. A Day Without A Caucasian.

Now that would be amusing. All the White Racism would be gone and so the various POC groups could turn on each other without the Melanin-Deprived to distract them. In this imaginary land, 80% Black and Hispanic, what do you really think it would be like? Like all the other places which are predominantly, or even significantly, Black and Hispanic? (If not, why not?)

Hey, I'm jus' keepin' it real.

EXPERIMENT #2:
PLURIBUS E UNUM

The second is to divide the country up, first into simply racial units: a White country, a Black country, etc. and imagine the outcome. Or to split it in two, a White/Asian country and a Latino/Black/Etc. country. Again, hilarity ensues.

On a smaller scale, choose 10,000 people at random from each racial group and move them to encampments --far separated from one another--where they have equal resources provided for them, all waiting and ready. Then leave them alone. White, Black, Hispanic and Asian cities. Then come back in a year's time and observe the results. What's your guess?

As a sideline, I imagined an independent LGBTQ city-state, all of America's 10 million or so queers of all colors and genders in one place. Think about the LGBTQs vs The Asians for possession of SF. Talk about funny. Portlandia with Dykes On Bikes and Drama Queens. (Eventually, though, it would be Stalinism with wheelchair access).

If you had an LGBTQ Rapture and all these folks, around 3.5% of the population, suddenly disappeared from America, what would be the result? (No more Ex Cathedra blogging...a tragedy, of course.) Ornamentation and decoration industries would be decimated. There would be noticeable gaps in the clergy and teaching sectors. Broadway shows and operas would have a hard time recruiting choruses. Otherwise?

What would be the effects of separating out the Jews from the Gentile Whites, having A Day Without An Ashkenazi? Even though most people recognize the hugely outsized role of Jews in America, given their mere 2% of the population, I think it would still be astonishing how much would change without them. The worlds of politics and government, education and scholarship, finance and business, law, medicine, science, the arts and literature, news media, entertainment of all kinds...all would be dramatically different. The gaps would be glaring. (The military and the police and anything involving physical work or skilled blue collar trades would be wholly unaffected.)

Two (imagined) results of this passtime struck me.

The first result has to do with the issue of "who creates wealth". If you had an All-Black American republic, there would no longer be any grounds for complaint about White Racism; we'd all be gone...although, as I said, I can guarantee you that "The Legacy of White Racism" would replace it in ten seconds as the blame/excuse mechanism du jour. Race-hucksters are big on "legacies": slavery, Jim Crow, etc*. Or they could fall into the Third World style of complaint. Like the pathetic African Dominican student in England who wanted to blame the Rwanda genocide on "faulty evangelization by the Europeans". That's "The Legacy of European Colonialism." The Debt, in case you didn't know, is eternal.

The most powerful --and rationally empty-- word in contemporary English.

Master AG Eric "My People" Holder said that Americans (meaning Whities) were cowards who did not want to talk about race. He's right. But his idea of a "national conversation" is pretty clear: Blacks whine and Whites concede. Affirmative Action Now, Affirmative Action Forever!

After more than fifty years, the difference between the promise and the reality of what the Civil Rights movement brought about is bitterly stunning. It has made me re-assess the respect for "Dr." Martin Luther King that I was brought up on. On my darker days (oops, is that a triggering microagression?) , I wonder if these two races, Blacks and Whites, are not like hyenas and lions, simply natural and implacable enemy groups. After all, where have we ever met up and trouble has not followed? And I wonder if all that blood and treasure spent to reconcile these two alien groups has been a complete waste.

Who would create wealth? If you assess the "cultural capital" of the 40 million Black Americans --what kinds of jobs they mostly do (government paid or low-level service and security), what kind of family structures they currently favor, (70+% of births are out of wedlock), their truly operative value systems (as opposed to the PR ones), their social habits, their education levels, numbers of skilled professionals --engineers, doctors, cyber-pros, pilots, teachers, etc. --to say nothing of the deeply taboo 15 point IQ issue-- it's hard to imagine an impressive outcome. And what would be done with the .85 million Black men now in The Man's prisons? The Legacy of the War On Drugs. Who'd run the hospitals, the schools, maintain the technology, handle the finances? In a White World, Blacks, as a group, don't do well. In a totally Black World, evidence is that they'd do far worse. Think Detroit. Think Birmingham. Newark and Camden. Baltimore. Post-Katrina New Orleans? Haiti? Zimbabwe? The post-apartheid Black South African paradise where crime, (especially rape), poverty and corruption are, well, what you'd expect? The list goes on.

If I may be so indelicate as to ask,

how long is the list of places or institutions where Blacks become demographically and/or politically dominant and things improve: stability, safety, civility, prosperity, etc? Even maintain prior levels rather than dismantle them?

Examples?

Blacks love to complain that The Man Is Holding Them Down.

The truth is, without The Man Holding Them Up, they'd sink like a stone.

PS. If you removed all the Blacks from America --as I imagined with the Jews or gays above-- what would be lost? The entertainment industry --music most of all--would be severely affected, as would sectors of professional sports. The police and the prison system would have a lot of time on their hands since crime rates would plummet. A great many social service organizations, both private and governmental, would likewise have much less to do and a good many government bureaucracies would lose a lot of employees. We would lose a fertile source of slang and catch-phrases. Have I missed anything? Oh, yeah. Joe Biden would be president...

The second result is that an All-White America, although it would have huge benefits in terms of stability and economy, would immediately reproduce the bitter ideological divide that we currently have and threaten to further split into White Right and White Left nations, deadlocked in battle and continuing to hate each other, now with less immediate distraction. After all, the Libs who wanted to leave the USA during the Bush era really wanted to get away from other Whites, not the POC's. In Leukotopia we'd have Noam Chomsky and Rick Santorum stuck together at even closer quarters. And since feminism is a largely White female passtime, the war between the sexes would continue unabated. What's not to love?

This suggests to me that the culture wars and the civil-war-without-guns that we have now is basically an internal fight AMONG Whites, but largely ABOUT non-Whites.

Below, n the left, racial % of the electorate; on the right Blue vs Red percentages of same.

Whites are the only significant race group who do NOT vote in a Democrat racial bloc.

The 1860's War Between the States was just such a war between Whites but largely about Blacks. In a way, the foundational North/South, City/Country, Industry/Agriculture division among the Original Thirteen Colonies gets replicated over and over again in our history, intra-Caucasian battling, with People of Color the contributing background issues: What do WE do aboutTHEM?

[The primal, primary and classic example of a country that has been obsessed with minorities, allowing its national life to be driven by them. Now, for instance, because a tiny tiny minority of gays want to get married, we are asked to re-frame one of the most fundamental societal institutions.]

The Liberal Whites would form their own country, (Urbania or Sophisticasia or Nuancia or Pacifica or Vaginopia), and then try to reunite with their beloved People of Color in their republics of Aztlan and Freedomstan (or Trayvonia). But if these Black and Brown republics turned out to be like all the other Black and Brown republics, they would be trapped between a desperate need for the Whites as funders, competents and scapegoats and a visceral envy of and loathing for their honky asses. Maybe they could swap the Asians for them.

Toward Our Future

What the sons of Europa need is a new religion: one that is as tribal, portable and survivalist as Judaism, as masculine, terrestrial and tough as Islam and as intellectually and aesthetically creative as Christianity...with a dose of the unflinching realism of the ancestral ways of the Greeks and Romans, Germans and Celts and Slavs..And for the larger Indo-European frame, something of the Indian capacity to combine an ultimate and philosophical realization of The One with a robustly mytho-poetic religion on-the-ground. Oh, and some of the psychological acumen of Buddhism.

Je ne suis pas Charlie Hebdo

In A Nutshell

Liberalism's Basic Flaw

Liberals believe that the chief role of the State is to force everyone to be equal, (ie, take vengeance on the successful). So when they are confronted with any group that they deem less well off than themselves, they are morally disarmed, completely and utterly. Any group that can achieve Victim Status is on their way to power and the (White) liberal's onlyjob is to give them what they want, no matter how much that damages him. And nothing may ever be expected, much less demanded, of them in return. It's a recipe for suicide: no other outcome is possible.

Demography as Destiny

"...then the end of the Roman republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing." Theodore Roosevelt, 1911

Multiculti Suicide

"Modern liberal societies in Europe and North America* celebrate their own pluralism and multiculturalism, arguing in effect that their identity is to have no identity."

Francis Fukuyama

Identity & Migration (2007)

*(White societies, that is.)

Equality's Dark Side (Oops, is that raciss?)

"“The sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced ... to a single principle.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835